Metalochaperonas: escoltas personales en el tráfico intracelular de iones metálicos

AbstractMetallochaperones are proteins that specifically bind metal ions with high affinity and selectivity to deliver them to target proteins, acting in the intracellular trafficking of metal ions to guide and protect them toward their fnal destination, and consequently, protecting cell against free metal toxicity. Knowledge in this area is limited, nevertheless, some metallochaperones have been properly identified and are well characterized for their structure, their roles and the mechanisms involved in the molecular recognition and metal ion transfer between the metallochaperone and the target protein, therefore allowing a proper understanding of the way these macromolecules function. Metallochaperones of copper are the most studied metallochaperones and more information about them is found in the literature. However, information about those employed for other metals is also found, particularly those employed for delivering iron, followed by those employed for nickel, only scarce information is found on those related with zinc and even less for other metals. In this manuscript, a general view of information found in literature about the functions of metallochaperones involved in the trafficking of metal ion or assembly of metal centers and their mechanisms is given, with the aim of provide current educational material for bioinorganic undergraduate teachers and students about an emerging subject hard to find in bioinorganic textbooks.ResumenLas metalochaperonas son proteínas que están diseñadas para unir metales específicos con gran afinidad y selectividad para entregarlos a proteínas que lo requieren en su estructura. El conocimiento en esta área es limitado; sin embargo, existen algunos casos bien identificados y caracterizados que permiten comprender cómo funcionan estas macromoléculas, cuál es su función y cuáles son los mecanismos involucrados en el reconocimiento molecular entre la metalochaperona y la proteína blanco, y cómo ocurre la transferencia del metal para realizar la entrega en el sitio adecuado. Las metalochaperonas de cobre son las más estudiadas y, por tanto, existe más información sobre ellas en la literatura. Sin embargo, existe también información sobre metalochaperonas para otros metales, particularmente aquellas que se encargan de la entrega de hierro, seguidas de las de níquel, solo escasa información acerca de las de zinc e incluso menos de otros metales. Esta revisión pretende documentar esos casos conocidos para proporcionar una visión general sobre las funciones de las metalochaperonas en el tráfico intracelular de metales o en el ensamblaje de centros metálicos y los mecanismos mediante los cuales trabajan, con el objetivo de generar material educativo actual para profesores y estudiantes de bioinorgánica acerca de un tema nuevo que es difícil de encontrar en los libros de texto de bioinorgánica

How Dual-Energy Contrast-Enhanced Spectral Mammography Can Provide Useful Clinical Information About Prognostic Factors in Breast Cancer Patients: A Systematic Review of Literature

Introduction: In the past decade, a new technique derived from full-field digital mammography has been developed, named contrast-enhanced spectral mammography (CESM). The aim of this study was to define the association between CESM findings and usual prognostic factors, such as estrogen receptors, progesterone receptors, HER2, and Ki67, in order to offer an updated overview of the state of the art for the early differential diagnosis of breast cancer and following personalized treatments. Materials and methods: According to the PRISMA guidelines, two electronic databases (PubMed and Scopus) were investigated, using the following keywords: breast cancer AND (CESM OR contrast enhanced spectral mammography OR contrast enhanced dual energy mammography) AND (receptors OR prognostic factors OR HER2 OR progesterone OR estrogen OR Ki67). The search was concluded in August 2021. No restriction was applied to publication dates. Results: We obtained 28 articles from the research in PubMed and 114 articles from Scopus. After the removal of six replicas that were counted only once, out of 136 articles, 37 articles were reviews. Eight articles alone have tackled the relation between CESM imaging and ER, PR, HER2, and Ki67. When comparing radiological characterization of the lesions obtained by either CESM or contrast-enhanced MRI, they have a similar association with the proliferation of tumoral cells, as expressed by Ki-67. In CESM-enhanced lesions, the expression was found to be 100% for ER and 77.4% for PR, while moderate or high HER2 positivity was found in lesions with non-mass enhancement and with mass closely associated with a non-mass enhancement component. Conversely, the non-enhancing breast cancer lesions were not associated with any prognostic factor, such as ER, PR, HER2, and Ki67, which may be associated with the probability of showing enhancement. Radiomics on CESM images has the potential for non-invasive characterization of potentially heterogeneous tumors with different hormone receptor status. Conclusions: CESM enhancement is associated with the proliferation of tumoral cells, as well as to the expression of estrogen and progesterone receptors. As CESM is a relatively young imaging technique, a few related works were found; this may be due to the "off-label" modality. In the next few years, the role of CESM in breast cancer diagnostics will be more thoroughly investigated

Determinación de la afectación económica del sector hotelero durante la pandemia del covid-19 en la ciudad de Macas

El presente trabajo de investigación, tiene como objetivo determinar la afectación económica generada por la pandemia del COVID-19 en el sector hotelero de la ciudad de Macas, Cantón Morona, Provincia de Morona Santiago. El desarrollo del presente estudio de orden descriptivo y enfoque cuantitativo permitió comprobar la hipótesis que relacionó los aspectos económicos de la actividad hotelera frente a la pandemia actualmente confrontado. La integración de estrategias en el orden contable permitió establecer una propuesta investigativa con alternativas de reactivación económica, en base a una encuesta que determinó el nivel de pérdidas económicas generadas en 30 establecimientos que brindan servicio de alojamiento, muestreo que obtuvo como resultado el análisis financiero vertical generado en función a los datos históricos consolidados por los cuatro hoteles más representativos de la ciudad de Macas, determinándose una reducción por ingresos económicos del 27% lo que equivale a un valor de 10.810,05 dólares por causas relacionadas a los efectos por la pandemia del COVID-19; donde los propietarios del sector hotelero ajustaron sus egresos financieros obteniéndose una utilidad bruta entre los períodos 2019 y 2020 dando como resultado el 31% que corresponde a un valor de 3.079,26 dólares. Posterior a ello se analizó el indicador de rentabilidad conjuntamente con la prueba ácida (indicadores financieros) donde su análisis demostró un promedio de rentabilidad del 31% para el año 2019 y una disminución del 14% al año 2020, que representa una caída de liquidez del 67% respectivamente. Concluyéndose con una propuesta para la reactivación del sector hotelero de incrementos por ventas que directamente van en relación a los paquetes turísticos ofertados por los hoteles, en diferentes plataformas digitales, con el soporte de una promoción realizada por las distintas entidades gubernamentales de la provincia y el país.The objective of this study was to determine the economic impact generated by the COVID-19 pandemic in the hotel sector in Macas city, Morona Canton, Morona Santiago Province. The development of the present study of descriptive order and quantitative approach allowed us to verify the hypothesis that related the economic aspects of the hotel activity in the face of the currently confronted pandemic. The integration of strategies in the accounting order allowed to establish a research proposal with economic reactivation alternatives, based on a survey that determined the level of economic losses generated in 30 hotels that provide accommodation services, a sample that resulted in the vertical financial analysis generated based on the historical data consolidated by the four most representative hotels in Macas city, determining a reduction due to economic income of 27%, which is equivalent to a value of 10,810.05 dollars for causes related to the effects of the pandemic of the COVID-19; where the owners of the hotel sector adjusted their financial expenses, obtaining a gross profit between the periods 2019 and 2020, resulting in 31% that corresponds to a value of 3,079.26 dollars. After that, the profitability indicator was analyzed together with the acid test (financial indicators) where its analysis showed an average profitability of 31% for the year 2019 and a decrease of 14% by the year 2020, which represents a drop in liquidity of 67% respectively. Concluding with a proposal for the reactivation of the hotel sector of sales increases that are directly related to the tourist packages offered by the hotels, on different digital platforms, with the support of a promotion carried out by the different government entities of the province and the country

Demographic market segmentation on short banking movement descriptions applying Natural Language Processing

Xunta de Galicia | Ref. GRC2018/05

Explainable automatic industrial carbon footprint estimation from bank transaction classification using natural language processing

Concerns about the effect of greenhouse gases have motivated the development of certification protocols to quantify the industrial carbon footprint (cf). These protocols are manual, work-intensive, and expensive. All of the above have led to a shift towards automatic data-driven approaches to estimate the cf, including Machine Learning (ml) solutions. Unfortunately, as in other sectors of interest, the decision-making processes involved in these solutions lack transparency from the end user’s point of view, who must blindly trust their outcomes compared to intelligible traditional manual approaches. In this research, manual and automatic methodologies for cf estimation were reviewed, taking into account their transparency limitations. This analysis led to the proposal of a new explainable ml solution for automatic cf calculations through bank transaction classification. Consideration should be given to the fact that no previous research has considered the explainability of bank transaction classification for this purpose. For classification, different ml models have been employed based on their promising performance in similar problems in the literature, such as Support Vector Machine, Random Forest, and Recursive Neural Networks. The results obtained were in the 90 % range for accuracy, precision, and recall evaluation metrics. From their decision paths, the proposed solution estimates the co2 emissions associated with bank transactions. The explainability methodology is based on an agnostic evaluation of the influence of the input terms extracted from the descriptions of transactions using locally interpretable models. The explainability terms were automatically validated using a similarity metric over the descriptions of the target categories. Conclusively, the explanation performance is satisfactory in terms of the proximity of the explanations to the associated activity sector descriptions, endorsing the trustworthiness of the process for a human operator and end users.Xunta de Galicia, Spain | Ref. ED481B-2021-118Xunta de Galicia, Spain | Ref. ED481B-2022-093Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico Industrial | Ref. EXP00146826/IDI-2022029

Behavior of heavy metals and natural radionuclides along the Moroccan phosphogypsum carbonation process with several alkaline reagents

Phosphogypsum (PG) is the main by-product from the phosphoric acid (PA) production industry being the PA production the basic raw material for producing the modern fertilizers. Because of its high calcium and sulfate content, it is important to emphasize that ecological benefits come from recycling and eventually converting PG into value-added compounds are obtained. This work aims to remedy the environmental problems associated to the large quantities of PG generated in Morocco. Furthermore, three procedures for PG conversion into Ca(OH)2, CaCO3, Na2SO4, K2SO4 and (NH4)2SO4 using hydroxide aqueous mediums were studied. The impurity traces contained in the PG were generally found to be completely transferred into the final calcite. The sulfates produced here are recommended for the use as a fertilizer (K2SO4 and (NH4)2SO4) and in the manufacture of detergents (Na2SO4), and the obtained calcite could be used in cement production, concretes, permeable reactive barriers for pollutants removing, etc.Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Huelva / CBU

Biostimulation versus bioaugmentation for the electro-bioremediation of 2,4 dichlorophenoxyacetic acid polluted soils

The aim of this work is to compare three biological strategies for the in situ remediation of a 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) polluted clayey soil by coupling electrokinetics (EK) and bioremediation (technology named as electrobioremediation, EBR). The first option (i) is EK-biostimulation, in which the activity of microorganisms already present in soil is enhanced by EK phenomena. The second and third options are EK-bioaugmentation, which consist of addition of microorganisms to soil through the inclusion of permeable biological barriers: (ii) using a microbial fixed biofilm reactor as biobarrier (BB1), and (iii) using a mixture of clean soil and a microbial suspension as biobarrier (BB2). Thus, three batch experiments at bench scale were conducted under a constant electric field of 1 V cm−1, and electrode polarity was periodically reversed every 12 h (2 d−1). The duration of each test was 10 days. Two additional tests using only biodegradation or only EK were performed as auxiliary reference tests. A microbial consortium acclimated to 2,4-D biodegradation was employed. Results showed that EK-biostimulation strategy offered the best pollutant removal efficiency (reaching up almost 100%) while biobarriers offered pollutant removal rates between 75 and 85%. Permeable biobarriers allowed the introduction of microorganism but caused a decrease in the electro-osmotic flow which, in turn, reduced the mobilization and contact between microorganisms and pollutants. These results can contribute to the knowledge and understanding of electrobioremediation of polluted soil and to the feasibility of delivering microorganism to the soil by using biobarriers. Despite biostimulation was found to be the best option, results show that permeable reactive biobarriers may result in a successful alternative for in-situ EK-bioaugmentation when acclimated microbial population is not already present in soil

Towards the optimization of electro-bioremediation of soil polluted with 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid

The aim of this work is to study the optimization of electro-bioremediation (EBR) treatment of a 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) polluted clay soil. The influence of two different variables were evaluated through batch experiments in a bench-scale electrokinetic setup using previously acclimated microbial cultures for 2,4-D biodegradation. First, it was studied the influence of the frequency applied in polarity reversal (PR): frequencies under study were 1, 2 and 6 d−1, i.e., polarity changed every 24, 12 and 4 h respectively. The duration of experiments were 14 days and the electric field applied was 1.0 V cm−1 (20 V) at room temperature. The second variable under study was the operation time, and based on the previous results, the selected frequency of PR was 2 d-1 and three additional EBR experiments were conducted using different operation times (3, 7 and 10 days). Experiments without electric current (only biological contribution) for each operation time were simultaneously performed under the same experimental conditions as reference tests to check the influence of electrokinetics. Removal of 2,4-D from polluted clay soil was completed in 10 days. It was observed that solubility of the pollutant is a critical factor to ensure high removal efficiencies. Moreover, polarity reversal contributed to the successful results by maintaining correct pH values and reducing the removal of electrolytes from soil. By comparing the EBR results with the reference tests (without the contribution of EK phenomena), it was proved that the combination of bioremediation and electrokinetics has positive effects in the remediation of low permeable polluted soil

Effect of the polarity reversal frequency in the electrokinetic-biological remediation of oxyfluorfen polluted soil. 2017, 177

This work studies the feasibility of the periodic polarity reversal strategy (PRS) in a combined electrokinetic-biological process for the remediation of clayey soil polluted with a herbicide. Five two-weeks duration electrobioremediation batch experiments were performed in a bench scale set-up using spiked clay soil polluted with oxyfluorfen (20 mg kg. Additionally, two complementary reference tests were done: single bioremediation and single electrokinetic. The microbial consortium used was obtained from an oil refinery wastewater treatment plant and acclimated to oxyfluorfen degradation. Main soil conditions (temperature, pH, moisture and conductivity) were correctly controlled using PRS. On the contrary, the electroosmotic flow clearly decreased as increased. The uniform soil microbial distribution at the end of the experiments indicated that the microbial activity remained in every parts of the soil after two weeks when applying PRS. Despite the adapted microbial culture was capable of degrade 100% of oxyfluorfen in water, the remediation efficiency in soil in a reference test, without the application of electric current, was negligible. However, under the low voltage gradients and polarity reversal, removal efficiencies between 5% and 15% were obtained, and it suggested that oxyfluorfen had difficulties to interact with the microbial culture or nutrients and that PRS promoted transport of species, which caused a positive influence on remediation. An optimalEste trabajo estudia la viabilidad de la estrategia de inversión periódica de polaridad (PRS) en un proceso combinado electrocinético-biológico para la remediación de suelos arcillosos contaminados con un herbicida. Se realizaron cinco experimentos por lotes de electrobiorremediación de dos semanas de duración en una instalación a escala de banco utilizando suelo arcilloso con púas contaminado con oxifluorfeno (20 mg kg. Adicionalmente, se realizaron dos pruebas complementarias de referencia: biorremediación simple y electrocinética simple . El consorcio microbiano utilizado fue obtenido de una planta de tratamiento de aguas residuales de una refinería de petróleo y aclimatado a la degradación del oxifluorfeno. Las principales condiciones del suelo (temperatura, pH, humedad y conductividad) se controlaron correctamente mediante PRS. Por el contrario, el flujo electroosmótico disminuyó claramente a medida que aumentado. La distribución microbiana uniforme del suelo al final de los experimentos indicó que la actividad microbiana permaneció en todas las partes del suelo después de dos semanas al aplicar PRS. A pesar de que el cultivo microbiano adaptado fue capaz de degradar el 100% del oxifluorfeno en el agua, la eficiencia de remediación en el suelo en una prueba de referencia, sin la aplicación de corriente eléctrica , fue insignificante. Sin embargo, bajo los gradientes de bajo voltaje y la inversión de polaridad, se obtuvieron eficiencias de remoción entre el 5% y el 15%, y sugirió que el oxifluorfeno tenía dificultades para interactuar con el cultivo microbiano o los nutrientes y que el PRS promovió el transporte de especies, lo que provocó una influencia positiva. sobre la remediación. Un óptim